Audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival handed the fest's top prize, the Peoples Choice Award, to the comedy Silver Linings Playbook, starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro and Jackie Weaver.

Playbook was directed by David O. Russell and features Cooper as a man recently released from a psychiatric ward, and Lawrence as the equally damaged young woman with whom he strikes up a relationship while trying to get his life back on track. It beat out quite a bit of high-profile competition, including a lush adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightley and Jude Law; Argo, Ben Affleck's based-on-reality thriller about the 1980 Iran hostage crisis, and Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, about a religious cult leader modeled to some extent on Scientology's L. Ron Hubbard.

NPR's Bob Mondello speaks with Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, about the week he spent at the festival, seeing 27 films, and attending gala events, including the world premiere of Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut, Quartet, a warm comedy starring Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins, about aging opera singers in a retirement home for musicians.